Becoming a primary education teacher - pedagogic discourses in the teacher education program’s examination practice

Organising the ‘industrialisation of instruction’: Pedagogical discourses in the Swedish Primary Teacher Education programme

“…Responsibility does not end within the universities. This study, together with previous research on the new Swedish PTE programme (Alvunger & Wahlström, 2018;Beach & Bagley, 2012;Beach, Bagley, Eriksson et al, 2014;Nilsson Lindström & Beach, 2015;Player Koro & Sjöberg, 2018;Sjöberg, 2010Sjöberg, , 2018aSjöberg, , 2018bWermke & Höstfält, 2014), clearly show that the conditions under which teacher education operates-strict regulation, constant evaluation, and a lack of financing-must change. If not, the job of educating 'high-quality' educators will become an impossible task.…”

“…With regard to global discourses on education, the most recent reorganisation of Swedish teacher education (SOU 2008:109) has been studied from the perspective of historical change or as a policy trajectory (Alvunger & Wahlström, 2018;Beach & Bagley, 2012Beach et al, 2014;Nilsson Lindström & Beach, 2015;Player Koro & Sjöberg, 2018;Sjöberg, 2010;2018a;2018b;Wermke & Höstfält, 2014). Among other things, these studies show that the TE programmes of 2011 are constructed upon neoliberal and neoconservative rationalities, breaking with a long tradition of continuity in educational logic.…”

“…The studies also show that concerns expressed in the policy text regarding the subordination of didactic content in the TE programmes were unwarranted, since the didactic content is clearly dominant, at least in the assessment tasks. Studies also show how various sub-discourses have been created throughout different parts of the PTE programme, among the various teaching specialisations and in the different subjects (Player Koro & Sjöberg, 2018;Sjöberg, 2018b).…”

“…One of the new programmes established by this reform was the Primary Teacher Education (PTE) programme, with its specialisations for preschool class teachers and teachers of grades 1-3 (K-3), grades 4-6, and teachers working in leisure-time centres. 2 Previous research on pedagogical discourses in the new PTE programme has shown how the subject didactics focus dominates assessment of student teachers' knowledge and skills, that there are subcultures within the programmes due to its assessment practices (Player Koro & Sjöberg, 2018), and that the current curriculum has a substantial influence on teacher education students' knowledge base (Sjöberg, 2018a). Finally, research demonstrates that there are significant differences between the various specialisations and subjects in terms of pedagogical discourses on assessment practice (Sjöberg, 2018b).…”

The Swedish primary teacher education programme: at the crossroads between two education programme traditions

“…Since the teacher education programme, like other programmes, has not adapted the rationale behind knowledge and teaching when new reforms have been introduced, various rationales have been operating parallel to one another within the teacher education programmes, and this has led to different subcultures (Beach, 1995;Beach et al, 2014;Bernstein, 2000;Hartman, 2012). In a study of the examination practice used by the primary teacher education programme, Player Koro and Sjöberg (2018) have shown how these (sub-)cultures and pedagogic discourses come into play in the current teacher education programme. Among other things, the study shows that there are different examination cultures with different pedagogic discourses within the different parts of the programme, in the subject theory part, in the didactical part and in the educational science part (UVK).…”